Tag: House

This is our moving week. We’ve been packing up as much as we can (or feel like) and tomorrow the movers come to pack the rest. I have never been more aware of my ability to get distracted! I’ll fill half a box here, put away half a basket of laundry, make a necklace and start a pair of earrings, fill another box, tape it, then start (but not finish) another box, have lunch…

We move in to our new house on Monday – woo hoo!

I get asked every day if we’ve started packing. Our friends Matt and Ashley gave us the boxes from their recent move, so we’re starting to pack away the non-essentials. I pulled a muscle in my back last week trying to get ice off our steps, so that hasn’t helped. But, the movers will pack whatever we don’t, so I’m not that worried about the whole thing.

Normally this close to a move I have the rooms all planned out with graph paper and little cut-out furniture (this is fun for me), but this time I don’t have a clue what to use the different rooms for. We’ve never had this many options; before there was one possible place for the TV and a couple corners here and there to squeeze in our desks.

In the last few weeks I’ve gotten pretty emotional about leaving my friends here, so I’m trying not to think about it. We’ll be 3 hours away, so not too far.

Class update: My evening and weekend slots are full, so what I have left is weekdays through the first of March. I am also planning to put together kits for certain classes (I know, I know – still haven’t done it).

We saw this house in Virginia last Saturday and it stayed at the top of our list until Sunday morning when we found out the owners had accepted an offer from somebody else. That really took the wind out of our sails for the house hunt on Sunday, but we did our best and found others that would work. It was hard to forget this house.

Then on Tuesday I got a call from our realtor saying the deal had fallen through and the house was back on the market. So we did a lot of emailing, scanning, and faxing this week and now it’s ours! We feel so blessed and relieved, and I keep expecting to wake up and it’s all been a dream. Today is Groundhog Day after all.

Ahhh Monday at last! Steve and I were in Virginia looking at houses over the weekend. That in itself was tiring enough, but it followed airline traveling and a full day of teaching for me on Friday and I’m exhausted.

On Saturday we saw about a dozen houses, and yesterday we saw several more and revisited our top choices from the day before. We’re looking for a totally different house from what we have now, so everything seems big and new. Our current home is 140 years old with bedrooms the size of the walk-in closets in these newer homes. But, they don’t have all the trim and old hardwood that we love in our current home. The market in Virginia cooled off quickly last summer, so there’s still a lot of inventory and I think we’ll be able to make a choice soon.

The thing that irritated me the most about several of the houses we looked at over the weekend was how dirty they are (especially having just spent weeks cleaning and repainting ours in preparation for selling). The owners had moved to their new houses but couldn’t be bothered to clean the stove or put a fresh coat of paint on the scuffed walls before they left. And here they are A YEAR LATER and they’re still paying two mortgages and blaming the slow market for their situation. Maybe I should be a professional stager who works for realtors. I would definitely outsource wallpaper removal, though.

I was going to post a picture of the For Sale sign on our house, but our realtor didn’t get a chance to put it up. Our house sold the first day on the market. Yikes! Thank you, Lord. It looks like we’re moving in March.

So I’m posting a picture of a curbside-found roll-top student desk from the Episcopal Church rectory. Steve saw it one day when he was walking Riley, and took a picture on his camera phone to show me. Then we brought it home and it sat for months in furniture purgatory. I kept saying I was just going to put it on the curb again because it wasn’t worth the work, but two weeks ago I was getting tired of cleaning so I took it apart and sanded it down as a procrastination tactic. Now it’s in our basement waiting for stain. Or movers.

Okay, okay. I’ve been quiet because I’ve been busy. And here’s why: we’re moving. That’s the nutshell version. Here’s the detail…

After grad school my husband got a job in Delaware. Then he changed jobs last year, working from home when he’s not traveling. It is wonderful and flexible, and around Thanksgiving it struck me that now we could live anywhere near an airport and I got this big yearning to be back home. After giving it lots of thought and clearing it with his main office, Steve agreed around Christmastime for us to move to Virginia. This was a huge gift for him to give me; he is from New York and doesn’t know many people in Winchester. I wasn’t in a major hurry to move, but Steve’s boss indicated that he might want him to work from the main office (near BWI) in a couple years. No promises, but it made us realize we have a limited window of opportunity. We met with our listing agent at the beginning of January and have been getting our house ready to put on the market. Not sure yet when we’re moving; depends on when the house sells.

So yeah, all the posts in January dealing with cleaning up and cleaning out were because we’re staging the house. I like to watch Designed to Sell to get pumped up before tackling projects. The house looks really good!

The hardest part of this whole thing has been telling our Delaware friends and the gals at Sparkles Bead Shop who have let me teach there. Everyone has been very supportive and we are so blessed to have this Delaware family.

On another sad note, my mom’s dog Amber died this week. My brother says now Mom should take Dad for walks. 🙂

Taking advantage of the warm weather, I finally did my fall raking on Thursday and pruned the shrubberies. (That link was put there for my mother). Yesterday we had rain and fog and I was inspired to take a series of pictures at the park after being summoned by the foghorns on the river. It was so pea-soupy I could not even see the end of the pier. Today Steve and I tackled the basement and are ready for the Cancer Federation pickup & garbage men. Steve looked rather manly carrying boxes of my junk with his leather work gloves. I want to keep everything and he wants to throw everything away, so I think we balance each other out.

Then we shed a layer and sat on the steps in the intense sunshine to have a break. The weather today was better than most days on our cruise in the Western Carribbean a few years ago this week. I would say this is a January Thaw, but we’re nowhere near the 25th and technically the ground never froze. In fact I’m seeing buds on everything and my bulbs are getting curious. I bet they’re gonna get it in February.